New Footage Friday: Dougie! Dundee & Barnes! Eddie! Jimmy Golden! Pre-Parka La Parka!

Bill Dundee/George Barnes vs. Tojo Yamamoto/Jimmy Golden CWA 5/20/75

PAS: This clip starts with the end of Barnes/Dundee vs. Tojo/Eddie Marlin, which is a pretty entertaining double juice brawl which ends with Dundee and Barnes grinding salt into Eddie Marlin's eyes and a wild post match brawl around the arena including a whole section of Dundee and Barnes crawling under the stage to escape. The Golden tag was titles versus Jimmy Golden's hair, and we get a really good chance to see Dundee and Barnes as a heel team. Barnes was a real bruiser with his punches landing with more thud, while Dundee's landed with more speed. Golden is a bunch of fun in this, he is so tall and his offense has this nifty awkwardness, that makes everything look less polished and more violent. That top rope dropkick he finishes with, looks like might have knocked Barnes all the way out of the ring.

MD: This has the last few minutes of Tojo/Marlin vs. Barnes/Dundee and the post match, the back half of Tojo/Golden vs. Barnes/Dundee, and a few minutes of Bob Armstrong vs. Stomper. It falls more on the "rare" side than completely new but it's nice to see it in one place. Any chance to see Barnes/Dundee in action is worth taking. Here they were big bumping (look at the armdrag over the top in the second match), big stooging (especially Dundee, who was quick with the object), wound targeting (Barnes, to the point where the announcing noted that he liked to target the head), heatseeking heels. We got glimpse of fiery hot tag Tojo, at bloody, struggling Marlin, and a bit more of that of plucky babyface Golden fighting from underneath and launching a mid-70s missile dropkick to win the belts. The best part of this was the post match of the first match though, where the faces trapped the heels on the stage and got chaotic revenge for the way the match went.

ER: I'm not too familiar with Barnes so this was a treat, as he gets more time to showcase than the others. He's like if Memphis Jeff Jarrett was a better cheating stooge. He throws hard punches that are a nice counterbalance to Dundee's whipping punches, and they both bump all around for big Tojo chops and Jimmy Golden is this mammoth clumsy athletic babyface. Dundee looks like a teen idol, like the bassist for Sweet or an Australian Paul Williams, and when he's paired with Golden it looks like Big John Studd vs. Sky Low Low. It's amazing. Barnes is a real great bastard, takes fun banana peel bumps, Golden shocks the hell out of me with a missile dropkick to win, the whole thing was an awesome glimpse at Dundee as part of a cutie pie Nightmares. "Bobby Sherman except asskicking cheaters." After the match you get to see how great 1975 Bob Armstrong was, before this match you got to see how great 1975 Eddie Marlin was, this was a wonderful 22 minutes of wrestling.


Chavo Guerrero/Eddie Guerrero vs. Los Invasor Del Norte Monterey 6/19/91

MD: This is a young LA Park as Invasor 1. As best as I can tell, he's the one with the yellow boots. That's the one that comes off as the star at least. There's a ton to like here. Chavo's cool and collected, smooth as can be. Eddy's a bit rougher around the edges but works like he has a chip on his shoulder. You get a real sense of Chavo having to basically babysit his younger brother who has something to prove which is one of those narratives that exists in a lot of fiction but not a whole lot in wrestling matches. Between Chavo's showmanship and the Invasors' willingness to stooge, the end result is a lot of fun. The first few minutes of the match is just them teasing lock ups but hugging instead (first the rudos and eventually the Guerreros to pay it off). When Eddy gets in, first ends up in a hold but Chavo sort of waves him off on a tag to get out of it. "You take care of this one yourself, kid." was the gist I got, which isn't something you usually see.

They were willing to try a lot of stuff, from back body drops over the ropes to a proto-STO to Eddy clobbering IY on the apron to a forearm, to those swinging arm drags that defy gravity but that look so cool you don't even care, with the first fall ending with duel Germans by the Guerreros and the second with real pretzel submissions by the Invasors. The beatdown that followed in the tercera was fine but I wish that Chavo had a bit more oomph on his save on Eddy that set up the comeback. It ended with a foul on Eddy and I would have definitely watched a hair vs mask match between Invasor I and Eddy on the way to Stuka eventually taking the Invasor mask.

PAS: Every bit of Eddie Guerrero footage we get is a true blessing, and he was electric here. His pendulum armdrags are incredible looking, and I loved the way baby LA Park takes them. All of the falls were classic lucha structure, Invasor's bump and stooge big for the initial babyface run, and are signficanlty rudoish during their beatdown. I liked the heat of the post match brawl, although I agree with Matt that it would have been better with more steam. This wasn't a lost classic or anything, but it was really cool to backfill the history of three all time greats (and whoever the other Invasor was)


Franz Schuhmman vs. Doug Gilbert CWA 12/20/97

MD: Totally committed Gilbert performance here, from the moment he comes in (to Born in the USA which while seemingly used for every American, feels particularly poignant here) with his jacket airbrushed with his own face to the brawling on the floor and the Bret-like roll up reversal out of nowhere he ate for the finish. In between, he basically did everything right. The chain wrestling to start was fun and believable even if it went maybe one minute too long given the length of the match. Gilbert got frustrated first and went dirty and his control segment was perfect, with him working the crowd and the ref and his opponent with a bunch of good stuff. The comeback was mainly brawling in the crowd with one big posting and then they went right into the finish. Good showing with Gilbert presenting himself, if not exactly like a star, then at least like a great, memorable character that you want to see again.

ER: What is Doug Gilbert doing wrestling one match in Germany? Don't care, because we got it! And this is one of the best Dougie performances I've seen, just going to Bremen for a one-off and coming off like a genuine star. He stalked that ring with an absurd amount of confidence, and it was cool how he adapted his style to be more technical opposite Schuhmann. He's still yelling at the crowd and being a dickhead about removing his jacket, but he doesn't spend all match just winging punches. Technical Dougie is fun as hell, and it's cool to see guys showing off the spectrum of styles they can work to adapt to a specific environment. I like wild eyed brawler Doug, but seeing him bend Schuhmann around with a cool Indian deathlock or a wrenched in figure 4, to bumping big to the floor and spiking Schuhmann with a great piledriver, it really felt like Gilbert wanted to show off everything he could do. He still gets to color in a lot of things with brawling, but him working a Schuhmann match was much more interesting to me than him working a Doug Gilbert match. As I said, he looked totally in control of that ring the entire match, just came off like a big deal. I don't think of Doug Gilbert as a guy who could go anywhere and have a professional 15 minute match in any style, but he looked like a pro's pro here.

PAS: This was a CWA vs. The World card which was completely crazy, along with Schuhmann vs. Dougie we get Osamu Nishimura and Tony St. Clair repping CWA vs. Rhino and Robbie Brookside repping WCW (Rhino was in WCW?), Marshall Duke vs. Savio Vega repping WWF, Chono shows up repping the NWO, and there is WCW's Ice Train vs. CWA Cannonball Grizzly, yes Ice Train vs. PN News, lets hope that shows up. Dougie was repping the USWA and he repped the fuck out of the USWA in this match. This was Bremen, Tennessee and Dougie broke out all of his great tricks, and even a couple we didn't know he had (that Indian deathlock was totally dope). Schuhmann was a bit of a passenger, but I loved his hard punches to Gilbert's forehead (I thought he was going to hardway him). Pretty much everything you would want from a hidden gem Doug Gilbert match.